Rep. Russ Fulcher (R-Idaho) suggested on Monday former President Trump consider hiring private security following the second apparent assassination attempt in the last few months.
“If I’m President Trump, and my objective is to stay alive, I want to look at a lot of different options, including possibly even private security to enhance some of these needs,” Fulcher said in an interview on “The Hill” on NewsNation.
“But the intelligence community has not been forthright in their communication with Congress,” he continued.
Fulcher praised the Secret Service officials for preventing greater tragedy on the golf course on Sunday, but he said the intelligence community has suffered a blow to the trust that Congress places in it.
“Well, first of all, who would have thought the biggest potential deciding factor for this election is keeping Donald Trump alive? Typically, in an election cycle, we’re worried about policies, voter turnout and those types of things, but right now, it’s just simply keeping Donald Trump alive.”
“So thankfully, there was a secret service agent who was doing his job and apparently saved the President’s life,” he continued. “And that’s wonderful, but overall, I have to tell you, the intelligence community in general has lost a lot of trust within Congress, they’ve earned a lot of that mistrust.”
Fulcher’s interview comes a day after Trump was targeted in a second apparent assassination attempt in West Palm Beach, Fla. at the perimeter of his golf course.
Secret Service agents, posted at a few holes nearby, noticed a man with a rifle push the firearm’s muzzle through the perimeter of the course. The rifle was sticking through the bushes 300-500 yards away.
A Secret Service agent fired at the man, who dropped the AK-47-style rifle and fled in a car. Officials subsequently apprehended the suspect, 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh.
The suspect was apprehended before he could inflict harm – a marked improvement over the July assassination attempt in Butler, Pa., which prompted fierce scrutiny of the Secret Service’s failure to protect the president from a bullet grazing his ear. But the effort has prompted renewed concern about the level of security around the former president.
NewsNation is owned by Nexstar Media Group, which also owns The Hill.
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